{"id":17,"date":"2026-04-07T14:36:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/how-eco-dystopian-novels-from-asia-and-africa-are-pushing-boundaries\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T14:36:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:36:52","slug":"how-eco-dystopian-novels-from-asia-and-africa-are-pushing-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/how-eco-dystopian-novels-from-asia-and-africa-are-pushing-boundaries\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018eco-dystopian\u2019 novels from Asia and Africa are pushing boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span> Sergey Nivens\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Speculative and futuristic visions of environmental calamity are being imagined globally through environmental fiction. Eco-dystopian novels can help people process their fears or mourn the loss of a more stable climate. <\/p>\n

My forthcoming book, Nature\u2019s Return<\/a>, shows that while anti-environmentalism is gaining traction in the west, the diversity and urgency of environmental visions from across Africa and Asia are coming into view. <\/p>\n

Here are my favourite examples from China and Taiwan, Nigeria and India.<\/p>\n

China and Taiwan<\/h2>\n

\u201cYou are bugs\u201d is the sobering message of the aliens in Liu Cixin\u2019s bestselling trilogy, Remembrance of Earth\u2019s Past<\/a>. Series two of Netflix\u2019s adaptation, titled after the first volume, The Three Body Problem, is scheduled for release in late 2026<\/a>. Liu\u2019s vision of environmental retribution is anchored in a visceral portrait of Mao\u2019s so-called \u201cwar against nature\u201d<\/a>, which reshaped the environment through things like mass irrigation and deforestation to boost economic production. <\/p>\n

The trilogy is a leading example of a wide-ranging ecological turn in Chinese culture and Chinese science fiction. As the cultural critics Yue Zhou and Xi Liu explain<\/a>, the story routinely takes aim at \u201crampant pollution, water shortage, natural resources depletion, overpopulation and electronic waste\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cara Healy, a professor of Chinese Studies at Wabash College in Indiana, US, argues<\/a> that \u201cfor centuries, Chinese intellectuals wrote about the past as a way to critique the present\u201d, but today it is the future that is employed and deployed \u201cto comment on our contemporary world\u201d. <\/p>\n

In Waste Tide<\/a> by Chen Qiufan, readers are told that science fiction is \u201cthe greatest realism at the present time\u201d. Set in a gang ridden island covered in tech trash, and populated by desperate migrants and mutant humans, Waste Tide is a bleak parable of China\u2019s abundance of garbage: \u201cThis island has no hope. The air, the water, the soil and the people have been immersed in trash for too long.\u201d <\/p>\n

The themes of tech waste and contamination have a particular resonance in modern China, but are understandable to readers everywhere. This explains the lively translation market for comparable Taiwanese titles, such as Chi Ta-wei\u2019s The Membranes<\/a> and Wu Ming-yi\u2019s The Man with the Compound Eyes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Nigeria<\/h2>\n

Climate catastrophe frames the drama and ethical vision of Lost Ark Dreaming<\/a>, by Nigerian author Suyi Davies Okungbowa. Lagos has been drowned, and people are crowded inside the Pinnacle, a vast, partially submerged, high rise in which the wealthy and powerful live on the upper levels, trying to keep the poor and the rising waters at bay. In Nigeria as in China, the eco-dystopian imagination is animated by images of injustice and cruelty, often in ways that refract colonial history. Other Nigerian-American examples include Nnedi Okorafor\u2019s Noor<\/a> and Tochi Onyebuchi\u2019s War Girls<\/a>.<\/p>\n

India<\/h2>\n

Indian contributors to the genre include Lavanya Lakshminarayan\u2019s
\nAnalog\/Virtual<\/a> and Varun Thomas Mathew\u2019s The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay<\/a>. The latter is set in the year 2041 in a post-Mumbai in which the population has also crowded into a towering redoubt, though this one is called the Bombadrome and is surrounded by a barren wasteland. <\/p>\n

The mistrust of technologically driven change is a distinctive feature of Indian science fiction, but the new wave of eco-dystopias is part of a global conversation. They are diverse but united in their effort to make use of the future to register loss, yearning and possibility. <\/p>\n

Malformed landscapes, biodiversity loss and tides of industrial debris are encountered throughout the genre, though climate change looms large in many examples from south Asia<\/a> and Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian science fiction author Emad El-Din Aysha once speculated<\/a> that dystopia was a distinctly western genre because those with \u201creal-life anxieties around every corner\u201d have no need to invent them. But it appears that real-life anxieties are not a brake but an engine for the imagination. Today\u2019s dystopian imagination is ecological and urgent and asks us to travel far into the future and into every part of the world. <\/p>\n

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons. If you click on one of the bookshop.org links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Alastair Bonnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sergey Nivens\/Shutterstock Speculative and futuristic visions of environmental calamity are being imagined globally through environmental fiction. Eco-dystopian novels can help people process their fears or mourn the loss of a more stable climate. My forthcoming book, Nature\u2019s Return, shows that while anti-environmentalism is gaining traction in the west, the diversity and urgency of environmental visions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}